Mary Berry Cooks, episode one, BBC Two, review

Great British bake Off judge Mary Berry's new BBC Two series gives us a polite
reminder of manners, says Adrian Michaels

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The Great British bake Off judge Mary Berry demonstrates how to make everyday meals in her new BBC series Mary Berry CooksPhoto: BBC

By Adrian Michaels

8:10AM GMT 04 Mar 2014

Long before the best German chefs were catering for the Shard, there was Mary Berry. Now 78 and best known to younger viewers as the nice one on The Great British Bake Off, Berry is a diverse cook with an incredible range. She has dozens of cookbooks to her name.

As we know, she is also a natural on television – she plays a kindly and very British grandmother from a genteel age partly as a culinary Miss Marple. But she is always welcome in our homes, a polite reminder of manners and good diction, and she displayed this amply in Mary Berry Cooks (BBC Two)

In the first episode, she was tackling the staging of afternoon tea. “As occasions go, it’s considered a bit old fashioned,” she admitted. But then we found out she keeps a secret stash of chocolate in her tights drawer to stop her family pilfering it; and that small scones are made deliberately small so that Berry can stuff a whole one into her mouth without looking any less like royalty.

We learnt much – how French pâtissiers use apricot jam in their chocolate bakes, how to make all the sandwiches a day before without them drying out, and how a tea towel can be used to preserve the perfect canvas for feather icing.

Berry showed off a tin of pastry cutters that she’d had for 55 years and then invited in her granddaughters Abbie and Grace to help out. Later she introduced us to a chap growing tea leaves in Cornwall, in a climate he says is the same as Darjeeling.